What About Gay Marriage?

[This is a column I've just submitted to the Community Press newspapers.]

Not long ago, I was scheduled to preside at a wedding ceremony. Just before things were to start, the groom told me, "Mark, we forgot to get a marriage license." Before I could respond, he went on, "But we figured it was more important to be married in the sight of God than to have our marriage recognized by the State of Ohio."

"You figured right," I told him. "Let's get this wedding started!"

Under the laws of Ohio, through the offices of the Secretary of State, I'm authorized, in legalese, to "solemnize marriages." It means that I can perform legally recognized marital unions in the State of Ohio and can sign papers to that effect. As a result, couples can claim all the legal benefits (and be held to all the legal responsibilities) that the state assigns to married couples.

But what I try to underscore with each couple over whose wedding I preside is that I attach little significance to all that legal stuff. It's far more important that couples be truly married than that they be truly legal.

Marriage only begins when two people, seeking God's help and the prayers of the Church, their families, and their friends, make public commitments to lives of loving faithfulness to one another. (And who commit themselves to turning back, or repenting, when they fail to be loving or faithful.)

I bring all of this up because there is a lot of talk these days about whether states should recognize gay marriages or not.

I want to make two points, which taken together are bound to anger everyone, I suppose.

One: From a Biblical perspective, "gay marriage" is an oxymoron. As one person put it, "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." As a Christian pastor, I would not preside over a gay wedding because I believe that it is contrary to the will of God. (For an extensive, scholarly, and sensitive discussion of this subject, you might want to read the book, The Bible and Homosexual Practice by Robert A. J. Gagnon.)

Two: As a Christian, I'm not exercised over efforts to make gay marriages legal. The state's interest in marriage relates basically to things like property and finances, responsibility and liability. The state recognizes marriage so that basically, it can act as a referee between couples and the world and among couples when marriages go bust. That isn't the Christian's interest in marriage at all.

If the state should legalize gay marriages, I couldn't then be forced to perform a gay wedding any more than I can be forced to perform heterosexual unions now.

A lot of Christians today implore political decision-makers to chisel definitions of marriage into law or even into the Constitution. They may be right. But these efforts might also reflect a kind of atheism, a lack of trust in God and in God's way of doing things.

God's usual method for changing people's minds and hearts isn't civil law. Instead, God commissions His followers to go into the world, live authentically for Him, and tell others about the eternal changes God makes in the lives of people who turn from sin and follow Jesus Christ. That isn't glamorous. But it, rather than legal coercion, is how God changes lives for the better.

Marriage is a sacred relationship between God, a man, and a woman. Nothing will ever change that, no matter what laws go on the books. If we Christians will simply strive to be faithful in living for and sharing Christ with others, marriage and every other facet of life in our world will be the better for it.